Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Chapter XXII - The Wedding Night...continued

This land seemed cursed with crippling winters that culled the population each year and I wondered if I would survive this night only to waste away from the arctic midnight months ahead. Although that was unlikely in as much as I had endured perfectly fine thus far, several years in fact, and had never been confined to a sickbed; ere now — I was sick with trepidation and the giant bed, now flooded by firelight, seemed to taunt me cruelly.

I nearly yanked the hair from my scalp when the door flew open, a veritable gust of cool air announcing my husband's dreaded arrival. How strange that still sounded. Husband. He appeared to me thus, abruptly and without the warning of approaching footsteps, venting out the warmth that had tentatively began to tepefy the room.

The little hairs at my nape stood instantly erect, gooseflesh spreading lightning fast across my skin, and I was not altogether certain the chill he'd allowed in was solely to blame for the static in the air. Meanwhile, he had said nothing. Simply closed the door and watched me silently, with a predatory glint in those disquieting amber eyes. I eschewed his gaze directly, never able to meet his stare long for fear he'd entice my very soul straight through my casements. 

Therewith I stood and moved to the window, after placing my comb on the vacated stool, to stare into the atramentous void without. The stars shunned me tonight, but 'twas the moon I yearned for; to paint her light upon that inky canvas — to bear witness to this hour. I should have gorged myself on wine so that I too could sink into oblivion as she had done... behind the blanket of thick cloud. Why was I feeling so awkward. So nervous. Had it been merely my imagination or had things seemed easier between us of late? Why then were we acting like strangers tonight?

Two steely arms appeared on either side of me as Lucian pressed his palms into the windowsill, level with my heaving chest. It always surprised and unsettled me they way he moved so silently despite being a man of so large a frame — as of a stalking cat. He made no move to touch me so I closed my eyes and imagined that I was yet alone. A most absurd endeavor, for I could feel the air betwixt our bodies thrumming with bridled energy. We, neither of us, said aught; yet the tension rained as clear as tempest fire.

"Will you ignore me all night, wife?" he whispered softly at my ear.

Wife. My eyes had shot open with the sudden shock of his resonating voice and I turned within the confines of the thick arms that caged me.

"No," I replied with a corrugated brow. "You know I cannot." He was not a man easily ignored. Not for any reason.

"Well, you could try..." He cocked his head in a challenging manner that was strangely playful, and so at odds with my mounting nerves. 

"But I shan't." He seemed suddenly disappointed by my dour response, but I was not coquettish by nature and knew not how to be. Or perhaps I could be if I were not dreading that which would soon take place between us.

Lucian nodded distractedly before changing the subject abruptly. "You surprised me this morning," said he, scratching his jaw as he swept his gaze over my lips and back up to my eyes.

"How so?"

He compressed his lips in a thoughtful manner. "You are a beautiful woman, Aria; but in your wedding finery...you quite rendered me senseless." He seemed almost sheepish as I stared nonplussed, and then kneaded the back of his neck with an awkwardness quite unlike him. We regarded one another silently and for a moment all thoughts of my anxious state were rived from my breast as I considered his words carefully, unused to compliments as I was. What was more, he seemed equally unused to giving them. "I should have told you ere now, but I am unaccustomed to the mawkish talk that comes so easily to callow swains."